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Good and Bad Advice on the Internet: Knowing the Difference

Eight in ten internet users look online for health information. When it comes to advice about your cat’s health, you’re looking for reputable sources of information. How can you tell the difference between good and bad information about your cat’s health online?

Scientific and Institutional Sources

Going straight to the scientific sources is a way of getting information about your cat’s health without risking someone adding non-evidence-based information to their articles about it. One of the best sources for veterinary journal articles is PubMed, from the US National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. When you read full veterinary journal articles, they’re heavy reading, but can provide valuable information you don’t see anywhere else.

In addition to the PubMed, which is a US federal web site, large professional organizations and well-known medical schools are also good sources of feline health information.

Professional Organizations

Some examples of professional organizations providing information for health and wellness for your cat include:

There are plenty more, but those give you the idea. Look for a .edu on the site’s URL, which indicates it is an educational institution.

Unreviewed Sources of Unknown Credibility

This category of web sites includes everything from well-informed individuals writing for sites, well-intended individuals writing about things they really don’t have enough information about, and quacks. You need to use some critical thinking when approaching web sites in order to decide which is which.

The site you’re reading now actually falls under the category of unreviewed sources of unknown credibility. I’m not a veterinarian or a behaviorist, and I write pieces for Topical Thursdays that might be considered giving advice. How would you decide whether this site or any others are well-informed or might contain non-evidence-based information?

Find the Primary Source for the Information

One of the first things to look for when looking for a credibility is determining the source of the information published. What is the primary source?

The primary source of the information may be the site’s author himself. If this is the case, what are the author’s credentials to give this health advice? There should be an About page or something of the type giving information that you can use to determine whether you want to trust the advice of the author.

The primary source may be a medical study. Look for information about the name of the study or the author so that you can refer directly to the study for additional details. You might find that studies cited are a dozen or more years old. Does that change your opinion of whether you want to take the advice from this web site?

The primary source may be quoted in the article. If that’s the case, there should be some brief mention of the source’s credentials so that you can decide whether they are a trustworthy source of advice for your cat. You can even search for other information about the person quoted to see how authoritative they are on the subject.

The primary source of the information may be another web site. If that’s the case, what is that site’s primary source? You can use the same steps above to decide on whether this site is a trustworthy source of information to provide data to the site where you originally got the advice.

Things to Watch Out For

A few more things to keep in mind while you’re surfing for health information for your cat:

You can’t always trust your instincts. Part of what some people don’t understand about cats when researching their health is that they don’t work like miniature humans. For instance, cats do not produce amylase, the enzyme that helps break down carbohydrates in food, in their saliva the way that humans do. Advice to eat lots of vegetables makes sense to you because you are accustomed to advice for human health, but it isn’t appropriate for your cat.

It’s not all in slick design. A great-looking web site may have unsubstantiated information and a site without bells and whistles may include only evidence-based information.

Consider how timely the information is. Veterinary science, like human medical science, keeps learning. Some information and studies from five or ten years ago may have been updated with new information.

What’s the web site’s agenda? Are they trying to sell you a product, and if so is their information biased to convince you to buy?

Use some critical thinking while you’re surfing the web for information about your cat’s health to ensure you get the best information to make good decisions for your four-footed friend.

Comments

My human spends the better part of her career trying to separate the good internet info from the scammy and just plain wrong! She gets so mad when people post a link like it’s the absolute truth… and it’s from the Onion! She is really careful when researching about cat info because she knows how crucial it is for us kitties.

Excellent article, and definitely applicable to both human and non-human health.

One key thing to note: Always follow the money. Even if the site is from a professional (especially if it references a study or studies or if the author of the site is a researcher), find out (if you can) who funded the study/paper/etc. Often it’ll be a multi-billion or trillion dollar a year pharmaceutical company or some other corporation whose agenda is to make as much money as possible.

Fabulous information. Another place that is a hotbed for misinformation (sorry guys) are Facebook groups. That falls into the area that you mentioned stating “well meaning individuals that have misinformation” Often yes, they are well meaning but the info or suggestions they give could easily NOT apply to your own situation and you can actually do more harm to your pet because every situation is individual and unique as are our cats.

That is why I rarely ask things in Facebook group. My rule of thumb, “when in doubt, call the vet”

While I am not a vet or a cat behaviorist, I, too, try to provide good, credible advice to cat owners on our blog. I only use reputable sources – vet schools, hospitals, organizations, etc that I know I can trust. I always specify, though, that people should ask their vet about specifics of their situations because every situation is unique and I’m not a vet.

I think the Internet can be a good place to start finding information, but I always verify things with a vet or vet tech that I have questions about and no experience with.

It’s good that you are raising awareness for cat owners to check the credibility of their sites. It’s unfortunate that there are a lot of people who are giving really incorrect information about cats out there.

unfortunately the .org / .com thing is very old and outdated. 15 years ago you couldn’t get a .org address with out proving you deserved it.. but that all went out the window a number of years back and a lot of people realized that the .com was so ubiquitous in our society that a lot of good informative sites use the .com address extension because people add it without even thinking When I registered my domain I went with .net because .com was taken and I wasn’t clever enough at the time to think of any other names that I might want… back then there were only the three options for domain names to the public as the others were restricted. These days very little is restricted and a guarantee of what you are going to end up on when you type in a domain name extension. although .gov is one of them.

Anyway, you are so right about sourcing your information on the internet. There is so much out there, and so much misinformation. And sadly todays right information is tomorrows bad information so it pays to keep up to date.

What a good article for thought and also some very thoughtful responses. Kim’s point about following the money is a good one. It’s true too and not just on any internet website about animal health this applies truly to all internet sites, be careful, what you read may be very biased for any number of reasons. Thanks for the great discussion.

I wanted to say that this is a great article. Thank you for posting this. As a veterinarian I deal with many clients who like to share the information with me that they learned of the internet and half of the time it is wrong. I even have clients who have attempted to treat their pets on their own and end up giving medications that are dangerous to their pets! I did write a post emphasizing the dangers of Dr. Google. http://www.anmldrblog.com/drgoogle/

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